Living under gender apartheid brings out the same behavior you see in prison populations. The female members of society are almost totally unavailable so you start seeing old guys make the young guys their bitches. That's all.

Homosexual rape is also very common in Pakistan; one victim was Mukhtaran Mai's brother, who has been raped three times starting at the age of 11 (nothing has ever been done about it), and another was the British citizen who was sentenced to death for accidently killing his attacker while struggling to prevent the rape(he was eventually released).

Not surprisingly, it's also very common in Saudi, where the Girl of Qatif's male companion was raped at the same time she was. I also know guys who have lived there who have been propositioned and men have offered to pay them for sexual services.

While rape of women is endemic in these societies and it is truly terrible, you never hear male rape discussed, even though it must be just as surely destroying people's lives. It's a curious discrepancy. Male rape is still something even Westerners haven't got the courage to touch.

with the obvious spook sitting next to her one the plane, is just-about, almost, funny.

The "info-dump" is by now obviously some self-glorifying reel spinning in Kansas' own head, or the creator's. Some kind of Walter Mitty device.

It's still too incoherent, there's not enough there, and there does not seem to be any driving idea behind the strip, just free-association pratfalls every week.

Nope. Still hate it. Nice try, though.

Still awaiting an editorial explanation for the mess. Salon, why so silent?

you do understand by now that it IS a mess...

don't you?

female world leaders have been a remarkably conservative lot. Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, even CDU's Angela Merkel. Female leaders have also been corrupt, taking kickbacks and engaging in nepotism, like Khalida Zia and Benazir Bhutto. So women leaders behave, on the whole, with the same mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly as their male counterparts.

There's not that much difference.

There's no point to the show.

apparently she was placed there for the sexual use of the male prisoners to keep them from "getting out of hand". In other words, not a mistake.

Also there are several similar cases in Brazil being currently investigated. In other words, not an exception.

If, as one poster has said, the expressionlessness of KOF was an "artistic" decision (although it looks like sheer laziness), then the effing pointlessness of the whole strip is probably also a decision (one which also smacks of sheer laziness). Bleah.

Talk about having total contempt for your audience. Trouble is, that kind of attitude tends to come back and bite you.

Rubens women did not look like this. For one thing, these women are not just fat, but not exactly in the first flush of youth. Rubens painted young plump things with luscious skin and tight breasts and all the rest of it, and they were lovely. It's not a comparison. "Fat" is not synonymous with Rubens or other artists who are sometimes invoked by the obese.

Don't dump on the people who say the subjects of the photos are not attractive. As older, corpulent women who would be consigned to the status of matrons in most cultures, they are not desirable as sex objects because several million years of conditioning and biology are working against it.

That does not mean these women are not humans, nor does it mean they should not be looked at or photographed. They are perfectly legitimate subjects for art and performance. But if anybody finds them erotic, it is a freak or fetish viewpoint (except for the men in their lives who have come to know them as people, and have bonded with them that way. The viewers don't know them as people. That's the difference). There's nothing wrong with admitting that.

So they're not sexy, but are they artsy? Dunno. I think other photographers have approached this subject with more tact and talent than Nimoy has here. Nimoy actually veers too close to the freak show angle for me, like when they all join hands and dance, or when he parodies the Three Graces.

I think we are getting confused here. The fat haters need to stop shrieking that these women are ugly (they're not). The fat apologists need to stop telling other people what to think and what to find sexy. All of these women are very obese with dull, grainy skin. They have health problems (one of the women in the project has already died of weight related issues). They are not really sexy except to a few fetishists. Whether this is due to our biology or our cultural norms or whether this is justified or not is really quite beside the point.

Personally, this isn't a book of portraits I would care to own. I might go see the pictures at an exhibition, but I can think of a hundred other photography shows I'd rather go see.

What planet do you live on?

Read any Pakistani newspapers lately? or Algerian? or....?

Honour killing occurs all over the Islamic world on a daily basis. It has its roots in tribalism, not religion, but Islam is so deeply a tribal religion that it is perfect for fostering the kind of environment in which honour killing (and FGM, etc.) can be carried out.

The Q'uran says you can beat your wife (Pickthall's translation uses the word scourge, the same word used in the KJB to describe the beating of Christ). The Bible says you can beat your children and in fact should beat them--with a stick (professionals consider striking someone with an object a particularly egregrious form of physical assault, and the victim is more likely to be injured).

Old time religion is some evil shite, if only because it enables abusers and gives them excuses. And yet we continually make excuses for it. Why?